the bed was a blues lyric, Patricia Smith the bed was questionable haven for a tangle, a wall of rain designed to rearrange a bended neck it was a suitcase a world-hipped woman had to bounce her hard butt bone on to close, crammed full as it was....  [more] Two Days in Seventh Grade Kevin Brockmeier There is funny ha-ha, and there is funny peculiar, and beneath a trapdoor in Kevin’s mind is a place where the two blur together, the place of jokes, churning so furiously that frequently, when it kicks up a line, he has no idea what it will turn out to be. He has discovered that whether a joke is truly witty doesn’t matter, only the glow in his voice, the glitter of invention...  [more] The Sound Patti White What a tornado sounds like is this: the tumbling of a breeze deep inside the chamber of the ear. It is precisely that register, with exactly that variation of pitch and tone, but multiplied exponentially to something that cannot quite be reproduced, a roar that keeps on thrumming inside the veins long after the clouds have cleared...  [more] "The Cinnamon Tsunami is Here": A Latin@ Writers Roundtable Gustavo Arellano, Angie Cruz, Carolina Ebeid, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Carmen Gimenez Smith In college, I learned intellectually what these positions of “minority,” of “otherness,” of “powerlessness” were. I wish I could remember what it was like to first read Edward Said’s ideas in Orientalism. I imagine it was an expansion of consciousness, a minor birth, white light and all. It helped me form a worldview through which I could read history and current events...  [more] The 2013 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose is Now Accepting Entries! Judge: Robert Coover Gulf Coast is now accepting entries for the 2013 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose. The contest is open to pieces of prose poetry, flash fiction, and micro-essays of 500 words or fewer. Established in 2008, the contest awards its winner $1,000 and publication in the journal. Two honorable mentions will also appear in issue 26.2, due out in April 2014, and all entries will be considered for paid publication on our website as Online Exclusives. All entrants will receive a one-year subscription to Gulf Coast with their contest fee.   [more]